For my money, the "real" Falcon is not necessarily the bigger interior set size. Lucas didn't want the ship too big & luxurious. He wanted it to feel kind of cramped like a WWII bomber. And Hollywood will enlarge an interior set just as often as they shrink an exterior. IMO a "real" Falcon would be more like splitting the difference between the interior & exterior sizes we see. That, and altering some of the interior shaping to make it agree with the outside.
I think for it to make sense as a freighter, and to allow the sort of systemry even the existing set
structures (not necessarily the exact layout) require means going with the current scaling of the 5-footer that's the official length, etc. Any smaller and the underfloor smuggling compartments won't fit, the tube corridors of that height won't fit, etc. Just because it's bigger doesn't necessarily mean that internal volume is given over to living space and creature comforts. From the four cockpit seats and presuming a nominal four-being crew under civilian operations, there's got to be accommodation for the crew. So. Separate berths? Two-person bunkrooms? With a shared head between? Galley space? Are all the bunks set up for medical use, or was that an additional medbay Luke was in at the end of ESB?
I know George didn't put thought like that into it, but I still feel verisimilitude is the scaffolding for believability in a fictional setting. Part of why I'm so irked it seems hyperspace travel takes even less time now that in the OT or PT. I can totally get behind the
Falcon being a tramp steamer. I can accept conceits like artificial gravity and hyperdense power generation systems (that reduce how much space the engines have to take up). But the human form as nominal scaling reference requires some bare-minimum consideration. I adopted this as my "headcanon"
Falcon some years back:
...And as things like the Behind the Macig CD-ROM came out, and as we've gotten these new films, I've idly poked at revising little things here and there to make it better fit the "official" layout, as far as enginery and bunkspace and such. With the PG
Falcon out, and me hoping for an ESB version, I've started actively working on that. Solo is potentially adding some interesting new possibilities. The two main things are that I've turned the portside airlock into the main boarding vestibule. The top hatch is there, access to the main shirtsleeves hold, and thence access to the portside "cold hold". The boarding ramp we see used in the films is the "auxiliary" ingress, for lower-tech worlds where the standardized hard-dock isn't available. I kept the ceiling-and-floor-mounted tractor guides for small modules to be taken aboard through a slightly-differently-laid-out forward loading dock than the above (making use of the hatches to the sides of the jawbox alcove, rather than the visible forward hull panel). I've altered those hatches slightly to be more person-accommodating (figure it's how Han got to where he's standing in that ESB pic). I figure, if nothing else, when one of these YT's is pushing a big module, it might on occasion be necessary to check on it without going EVA.
So, if that
is the auxiliary craft of the toy we seeing being entered in the trailer via the full-height doorway, I'm fine attributing that to the "a certain point of view" of the rest of the
Falcon depicted in the films versus how it would have to be laid out to actually fit in the ship we have. If we already have to accept that the boarding ramp can't
possibly hinge where it does and still open into a ring corridor and not the gunwells, if we have to accept that the gunwell ladder can't
possibly be positioned/oriented as shown, if we have to accept that the ring corridor can't
possibly meet the crew day room at the angle it does, etc., then this is just one more.
--Jonah
